from the not-messing-around dept

It appears that Google may be done messing around with ridiculous laws. Just after announcing that it was shutting down Google News in Spain due to a ridiculously bad copyright law that is about to go into effect, it's been reported that the company is also shutting down its Russian engineering office, likely in response to new Russian laws, requiring that any personal data of Russian citizens be held inside the country. The Russian government, of course, claims this is to better protect Russian citizens, but most people believe it's actually to allow for greater surveillance of Russian citizens:

Google Inc has plans to shut down its engineering office in Russia amid a crackdown on internet freedoms and a law regarding data-handling practices, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Of course, Russia is not alone in either requiring localized data storage or in ramping up digital surveillance. It's going to be worth watching how a variety of large internet companies start dealing with these new challenges. Ever since the Snowden leaks first came out, many in the tech industry warned of the threat of "localization" rules that might splinter the internet, by requiring all data to be stored "locally" (greatly diminishing the economies of scale of global data centers). Closing down one office in protest is worth noting, but it only foreshadows a much bigger global fight to come.

McGuinness (again) thinks he has a quick fix for the piracy problem, and it all revolves around Google.

What needs to be done is simple, take the sites down and keep them down. If the pirates can manage to replace their sites instantly with legions of bots, Google, with their brilliant algorithm engineers can counter it. We need the technology giants like Google to do the things that labels, the publishers, the artists, the writers repeatedly ask them to do. They need to show corporate and social responsibility. Take down the illegal sites, keep them down and clear the way for the legal digital distributors like iTunes, Spotify, Deezer, the new Jimmy Iovine Beats service, which promises to be a very serious competitor.

Yes. It's all so "simple." Just "take sites down" and "keep them down." Like many people who frequently confuse "Google" for "the Internet" (see also: many people in the UK government), McGuinness overstates the simplicity of his request while granting powers to Google that it simply doesn't possess.

Let's tackle the "simplicity" aspect first. If McGuinness is only referring to delisting sites (and that's somewhat unclear), it's not nearly as easy as he (or the RIAA, MPAA, UK government) thinks. There are several ways this could go wrong (see also: site blocking/web filters), not the least of which is that it puts internet access in the control of agencies and entities that can't even seem to issue DMCA notices without taking down legitimate content sources. So, if labels and studios (and those represented by them) can't even send out failure-free DMCA notices, they're hardly in the position to tell a company that indexes millions of sites how "simple" it would be to "block" or "take down" pirate sites.

Then there's what's actually in Google's power to do. McGuinness does mention "algorithms" but shortly thereafter he's deploying wording that sounds suspiciously like a call for Google to take down sites, as in do a private ICE job and lock up the domain, thus keeping it out of searches and "clearing the way" for legitimate offerings. That's something Google simply can't do, and even if it could, certainly shouldn't do. Google's main product is a search engine. It crawls and indexes sites. It is not in the "internet police" business. That's not what it's product is intended to do and that's not what a majority of those using the search engine want Google to be doing.

But the RIAA, MPAA and others insist this is Google's job -- to sniff out infringing content and remove it from the web (or at least, its search results). Google processes millions of DMCA notices per year, but this is always viewed as a sign of failure on the company's part. If it was "better" at the job McGuinness and others think it should be doing, it wouldn't be receiving so many notices.

Somehow, it always comes back to the claim that Google "owes" millions of content creators something for indexing the web.

I would like to see them open their hearts a little and be more generous to the ecosystem that started their success a few years ago. Google talks a lot about Internet freedom -- that's fine, we all support Internet freedom don't we* -- but let's not confuse freedom of speech with the freedom to steal pirated stuff.

I don't think anyone confuses freedom of speech with piracy, but just like the above situation, it's not nearly as simplistic as McGuinness and others believe it is. Shut down a whole site because it hosts or links to pirated content and you're also shutting down everything that surrounded it, a lot of which greatly resembles "free speech."

McGuinness likely won't be happy until every search engine is completely subverted by IP-heavy industries, but that's apparently acceptable collateral damage if it results in incremental sales increases.

from the not-a-good-thing dept

We frequently worry (or point out the negative consequences) of technologically illiterate politicians passing laws that impact technology. It goes beyond just laws, however, into other investigations. Frank Ahrens, at the Washington Post, highlights what happens when you have technologically illiterate politicians trying to investigate the Toyota acceleration problem, highlighting a troubling exchange between Toyota's boss, Akio Toyoda, and Eleanor Holmes Norton, the Congresswoman from DC:

Toyoda said that when his company gets a complaint about a mechanical problem, engineers set to work trying to duplicate the problem in their labs to find out what went wrong.

Norton said: "Your answer -- we'll wait to see if this is duplicated -- is very troublesome." Norton asked Toyoda why his company waited until a problem recurred to try to diagnose it, which is exactly what he was not saying.

Members of Congress are generally lawyers and politicians, not engineers. But they are launching investigations and creating policies that have a direct impact on the designers and builders of incredibly complex vehicles -- there are 20,000 parts in a modern car -- so there are some basics they should understand. Chief among them: The only way to credibly figure out why something fails is to attempt to duplicate the failure under observable conditions. This is the engineering method.

But, of course, understanding how engineering and technology works doesn't get you (re-)elected. Grandstanding does.